Zuzalu Is the First Longevity City

From meditation to yoga, dance parties to community learning, Zuzalu is the first-of-its-kind. Think of it as a music festival, but for longevity.

The two-month experiment will be ending on May 25th where approximately 200 core residents have been living off the Montenegro Adriatic coast in a pop-up city focusing on longevity since March 25th.

Vitalik Buterin, founder of Zuzalu and the youngest crypto billionaire, launched the community with the concept of hosting events for biology, technology, longevity, and even a few hack-a-thons. Visitors are encouraged to attend the conference-like events, however, they are also welcome to roam and engage with one another organically. Their website says, "Think of it like a campus with a 10% course load."

Buterin is the founder of Ethereum, a decentralized blockchain, who is considered a "hero" by many seeking age and rejuvenation research. It's not surprising then that many of the longevity industry's most famous leaders — like Joe Betts-LaCroix of Retro Biosciences and Nathan S. Cheng of Healthspan — have been living in the mini-community.

This week, Zuzalu is hosting a handful of events for its crash-course longevity conference. Questions like, "How do we tell if longevity interventions are extending our lifespans?" as well as exploring tissue and organ replacement options. Lectures will be led by Cat Thu from VitaDAO, and exercise and cardio classes will be led by Natalie Kuhn. Other events include discussions with Buterin, Primavera De Filippi from the Research at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS), Ksenia Winslow from BioAge, and Max Unfried, the scientific advisor at VitaDAO.

The pop-up city is focusing their discussions on the "network state," a term that refers to an online community that crowdfunds their own territory, has a recognized founder, has their own cryptocurrency, and is recognized by pre-existing nation states.

Zuzalu is supported by VitaDAO, a longevity organization with 9,000 members focusing on age-related disease research, who could possibly become a network state. At Zuzalu, the community is experimenting to see how a network state could be put into action.

So, what's so healthy about Zuzalu?

Not only are they discussing longevity and cutting-edge biohacking, but residents are also living in a health-forward way. Restaurants in the city offer healthy, fresh foods, residents participate in cold plunges, and exercise routines are led every day. They offer continuous glucose monitoring, biological age tests, and blood tests to calculate phenotypic age.

Of course, we won't know the outcome of the experiment until the end of May, when residents will pack their bags and head home. And even then, statistically, results may not prove very much. But having a hundred people living together, utilizing the same day-to-day health measurements may yield results that no one is prepared for — or it may be another Fyre Festival, only time will tell.